A Dec. 11 WorldNetDaily article by Art Moore stated that it was the first of a three-part interview with Rick Warren, the "Purpose-Driven Life" guy; the second part was posted Dec. 12. Moore takes a weird way of countering Warren's statements -- by attributing the other point of view to unnamed "critics":

"Many of his critics take exception to that inference about Islam and further argue that agreeing to "excesses" in the war on terror and apologizing for the Crusades actually reinforces al-Qaida and other movements that use the claims as pretexts for their global jihad."

"Critics also argue the Crusades were a defensive response to Islamic jihad, and today Muslims are the aggressors in most of the world's hot spots. Muslims aren't apologizing for this, yet the letter to the Islamic leaders essentially puts Christians in the position of taking the blame."

"But Warren's critics say, regardless of whether the state Syrian report was true, he was captured on a 50-second home video walking down a Damascus road mentioned in the book of Acts, Straight Street, saying Syria is 'a moderate country, and the official government rule and position is to not allow any extremism of any kind.'"

Moore makes no effort to corroborate in detail the claims by these "critics," let alone cite anyone specifically making these criticisms. That is likely because one of Warren's leading critics is, in fact, WorldNetDaily.

WND editor Joseph Farah has bashed Warren for traveling to Syria, then taunting Warren for not immediately responding to his attack: "Is the strategy now to ignore Farah? Is the strategy to pretend WND doesn't exist?" Farah then got into a name-calling war with Warren, as he detailed in a Dec. 26, 2006, column:

Warren falsely accuses me of caring more about politics than winning people to Christ. This is a malicious lie. It is because I care about evangelism, real evangelism – not selling books, not expanding my "ministry," not having my sermons broadcast on television – that I criticize those who edify hateful, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish politicians like [Syrian leader] Assad.

[...]

My criticism of Warren has been focused like a laser beam on an inexcusable, immoral action he took in Syria. Since calling him on it, he has lied repeatedly, told different audiences what they want to hear, made excuses, uttered virtually unintelligible gibberish about his experiences in the Middle East.

WND has also run articles heavy on criticism of Warren for allowing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to speak at his church, as well as featuring someone calling Warren"an enabler and defender of evil" for his visit to Syria. (Moore finally names a critic at the very end of his Dec. 12 article, quoting Farah as saying he stands "by every word I wrote in those columns.")

Why is WND suddenly being nice to Warren now (even if Moore is dishonestly trying to undermine him with anonymous "critics")? Hard to say; perhaps WND got enough letters from Warren supporters that it realized that it needed to treat him fairly -- sadly, WND generally has to be cajoled into providing something approaching fair and balanced coverage -- or perhaps it was Warren himself who pointed out that WND has not given him a fair opportunity to respond to its criticism.

'Tis the season for giving, after all, and this is likely just a sop to get Warren and his supporters off WND's back for a while. Watch for WND to resume bashing Warren -- pretending it was never nice to him -- at the next available opportunity.